Tar Heel Born and a Tar Heel Bred

I was glad to hear that Kelly's Korner was featuring alma matters today because not only do I love talking about my college experiences, but I find it so interesting to hear about other schools. I just love schools with lots of fun traditions and wacky stories.



My alma matter is Carolina. THE Carolina - UNC. Ha! All the South Carolina alums are already closing their browser. UNC was my only choice of colleges - I knew the second I stepped onto UNC's tree lined campus for a tour that I was meant to go there. I never had any doubt and so I applied to their early decision program and I still remember the day I got my acceptance letter. It was the most amazing feeling!

I really wanted the huge university with lots of people, classes with hundreds of students, the historic architecture and traditional brick walkways everywhere.



I ended up becoming BFFs with a girl that I remember not liking at all in high school - haha! - and we lived together off campus for three years after spending almost every waking moment together during freshman year. She didn't go to my high school, but she went to a rival school and obviously I had no reason to think ill of her. Now I think she is one of the sweetest and most kind-hearted women I know. She is actually more like a sister to me because we spent so much time together and lived with one another sharing clothes, food, electricity bills, etc. We really grew up beside each other and learned how to be adults who maintained a living environment, balanced work with play, paid bills and made important decisions for ourselves. I got to see her meet the love of her life, go through all the different stages of dating and now they are married. I love having her in my life and without UNC I would have missed out on a great friendship.

We shared custody of a dog, Maggie, while we lived together and my roomie still has Maggie to this day!



My roommate's parents gave us some great furniture when we lived off campus and it was amazing to walk into an apartment each night that felt so cozy and warm. We were super lucky!

My brother went to UNC for one year before transferring. He wanted to go to a small school where he already had a lot of friends didn't want the big campus experience. I'll never forgive him for doing that! Tear...

I met my husband in high school, but we ended up attending UNC together and that was also a great experience. It's been really nice always knowing the same people and having the same group of friends. It was also fun to experience different parts of UNC that I wouldn't have if it hadn't of been for Brad.

Halloween was a big deal at UNC. The city closed down Franklin St and everyone would walk around in costume doing who knows what. Here's a good one - haha!

 While at UNC I was super busy. I still have my planner that I kept my senior year. I kept it color-coordinated for class projects, tests, group meetings, work, etc. It makes me tired just looking at it now!

UNC was so challenging academically! Every class I took was soooo hard! I don't remember taking one class and thinking that it was easy. I can even remember people telling me "don't take Intro to Music" or "Spanish will kill you". I never heard "take this class it's an easy A" - although a few more A's definitely would have helped my GPA! I don't even think I ever heard of an easy B now that I think of it.

My freshman year was definitiely the most memorable because that was when I made most of my friends and when I learned about "life" and just going out with friends without having to ask for permission or walking across campus at night by myself after a late meeting and thinking how scared I was. I probably went out more when I was 18 than I've gone out since the ten years after that - combined! Life was just so new and I enjoyed the new independence that college brought.

I think one of the best things about UNC was the diversity. I met so many people who were just different from me and I LOVED it. I came from a really small high school where everyone was the same more or less, and I just loved that college was a clean slate and there were rich, poor, black, white, gay - one of everything! I really didn't know anyone who didn't get along - it was just a perfect little bubble world.

Obviously sports are a huge part of most UNC's student's lfie and that was definitely true for me. I went to pretty much every football and basketball game when I could just because I knew that I probably wouldn't be able to do that after graduation. I could not have been any more right. Football was easy to get into with a student ID, but for basketball tickets there was a huge process that involved getting a wrist band with a number on it during a specific week, going to the Dean Dome on Sat at 6 am and standing in line for several hours in order to get TWO basketball tickets for maybe three home games. That was done about three or four times in the fall, but it was still late enough to be freezing at 6 am! You could take your student ID and a friend's to get a ticket. The problem was if you didn't get a good number on your wrist band then you wouldn't be near the start of the line and you may not even get tickets! So the smart thing to do was get a group of friends together, have half of them go at one point in the week to get wristbands and the other half go at another time. That way you had a better chance of getting a good number and whoever got the better number would go get tickets and take the IDs of the other half of the group. I'm telling you, it was serious business! And only students could go to get Duke tickets. That was a whole distribution just by itself, obviously.

Our whole family loves UNC - even our neice!

This was at the UNC v Duke home game my senior year. I think we were a couple rows from having our backs against the wall, but it didn't matter! It was worth it! (Sorry for the bad quality. Scanning pictures is so 2001, huh?)



 Graduation was such a happy, but also sad time. I knew I was leaving Chapel Hill and up until that point, it had been the greatest time of my life. College was hard because, well it's college, but I really became who I was meant to be when I was living in Chapel Hill and so I'm really grateful to UNC for opening the world to me.



I remember thinking that life was so great at UNC and thinking that I wanted time to just stand still.

I will forever be a Tar Heel born and a Tar Heel bred!

I really can't even think about UNC without getting a smile on my face. It was such a great experience for me and I have such a connection with that school. I love being able to say that I went there. Thankfully, I never took one moment of UNC for granted and I'm glad I had the time in Chapel Hill that I did. I cannot imagine going to any other school.